y~ 




Kl7 



^^f 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



V 



013 743 638 3 ^ 



pHS3 




E 625 
.K67 

Copy 1 u. S. Sanitary Commission.— No. 89. 



ex:ti^_a.ots 



luirlcrlD ^jjcfiiil Jclitf Jfpd 



D. S. SANITARY COMMISSION, 

Wasliinflon, D. C, April, 1865, 



CONCERNING THE REBEL HOSPITALS AT RICHMOND, VA., AND 
THE PROVISION MADE FOR THEIR PATIENTS, AS CON- 
TRASTED WlTIi THE SUPPLIES FURNISHED 
TO UNION PRISONERS OF WAR IN 
REBEL HANDS. 



AL ,y^ :;'-p^ 



WASHINGTON, D. C. : 

PRINTED BY McGILL & VVrrilEIlOW. 

ISOo. 






[Extracts from the Report of Frederick N. Knapp, Superintendent of Special 
Relief, read at the quarterly meeting of the Board of the U. S. Sanitary 
Cmmission, Washington, D. C, April 20, 1865.] 



On Sunday, April 2d, I arrived at Wilmington, North 
Carolina, having left Washington in response to the call made 
by Dr. Agnew in his letter of ]\Iarch 20th, describing the 
wretchedness and destitution of the 1,500 or 2,000 Union 
prisoners who had just been brought into Wilmington, 
exchanged or paroled from the Rebel prisons.* When 

* Dr. C. R. Agnew, of the U. S. Sanitary Commission, in a letter to the 
General Secretary, dated Wilmington, N. C, March 20, 18G5, writes thus: — 

*■!«•* "The returned prisoners sent into Wilmington numbered nearly 
9,000. Some 7,000 of the less famished have gone North. General Abbott, who 
received our poor fellows in the exchange, has jus told me that language would 
utterly fail to describe their condition. Filth, rags, nakedness, starvation, were 
personified in their condition. Many of the men Avere in a state of mind resem- 
bling idiocy, unable to tell their names, and lost to all se ise of modesty, un- 
conscious of their nakedness and personal condition. Some of them moving 
about on their hands and knees, unable to stand upon their gangrenous feet, 
looking up like hungry dogs, beseeching the observer for a bite of bread or a 
sup of water. Some of them hitched along on their hands and buttocks, 
pushing gangrenous feet, literally reduced to bone and shreds, before them. 
Others leaned upon staves, and glared from sunken eyes through the parch- 
ment-like slits of their open eyelids into space, without having the power to 
fix an intelligent gaze upon passing objects. Others giggled and smirked, and 
hobbled like starved idiots; while some adamantine figu es walked erect, as 
though they meant to move the skeleton homewards so long as vitality enough 
remained to enable them to do so. To see the men who remain here in hos- 
pital would move a heart as hard and cold as marble. Their condition is that 
of men who have for months sufl'ered chronic starvation. Their arms and legs 
look like coarse reeds with bulbous joints. Their faces look as though a skil- 
ful taxidermist had drawn tanned skin over the bare skull, and then placed 
false eyes in the orbital cavities. They defy description. It would take a pen 
expert in the use of every term known to the anatomist and the physician to 
begin to expose their fearful condition. May God in his infinite mercy, for- 
give the creatures who have done this horrid thingl" * * * * 

3 



I reached Wilmington, all but 300 of these Union prisoners 
liad been sent North ; and those who remained had been 
made in all respects clean and comfortable, as had been 
those who had gone on shipboard. And this had been done 
largely, almost exclusively, through the abundant supplies of 
clothing furnished by the Commission — some thousands of 
garments — which enabled these men to lay aside the filthy 
rags in which alone they had for months been clothed. I 
am convinced from what I myself saw, and from the testi- 
mony of the medical and the military officers at Wilming- 
ton, that the Sanitary Commission did one of its most 
blessed and beneficent works in the help it gave to ihe sur- 
geons there, who, with utterly deficient means athand, were 
trying to lift these returned prisoners out of a state of 
filth and starvation — a condition resulting directly from long 
confinement at the South and studied deprivations. And 
I may add that among the men who still remained at Wil- 
mington, although they were surrounded by comforts, and 
their appearance had of course been entirely changed from 
what it was at first, there was, in the seventy gangrenous 
limbs (dry gangrene from frost or exposure) of men 
gathered in one hospital, the saddest and most striking 
evidence I have yet seen of the malignant cruelty practiced 
upon our Union prisoners by the enemy. 

On Friday, April Tth, I left City Point, upon the Sanitary 
Tu<»-Boat, "Gov. Curtin," which was starting with stores 
for Richmond. We arrived at Richmond Friday evening, 
having been delayed on our way up two hours, at "Deep 
Bottom," where we took on to the " Curtin" quite an amount 
of supplies from what had been the Sanitary Store-house 
of the 2;jth Army Corps; the sanitary wagons, — which you 
will recollect followed the troops into Richmond the morn- 



ing it was evacuated, — though well loaded, were able to take 
but a share of the supplies. 

Saturday morning, after passing by the smoking ruins, 
and getting sight of " Libby Prison" and " Belle Isle," — each 
bound in with its terrible history, — I went out to "Jackson 
Hospital," one of the principal hospitals of the place, a 
mile and a half or two miles from the city ; and here I saw 
that which, by contrast, made me feel ten-fold more fully than 
ever before how great had been the barbarity of that system of 
starvation and exposure by which the rebels, with slow and 
terrible death, had killed ofFour men, their Prisoners of War. 

I found at that rebel hospital the evidence of thorough or- 
ganization and wise system — a large generosity in all the pro- 
visions for the comfort of their patients ; and testimony 
proving the fact that, as a general thing, there had been 
no lack of supplies there, but usually an abundance of all 
needed stores. As I looked on these well ordered methods, 
and the liberal provision which had long been made by the 
rebels at that hospital, located within less than cannon-shot 
distance of Belle Isle, I felt that the thin screen of ^^ir/norcmce" 
or of '■Hnabilit)/," with which some persons still seek to 
temper the barbarity of the rebels, must be at once and ut- 
terly swept awa}', leaving the inhuman cruelty of this slow 
murder to stand out clearly, and its true nature to be recog- 
nized, viz : a means systematically arranged and adopted, 
under a deliberate plan, as an engine of war, whereby to thin 
our ranks by death, precisely as the bayonet is used in 
battle, — except that the bayonet is connected with bravery, 
while this instrument of death is the weapon of cowardice. 
For what could stand in stronger contrast with the boasted 
chivalry of the South, or with the undoubted valor of her 
soldiers in the field, than this resort to a process of starving 
defenceless men by thousands, showing that the spirit of 



6 

slavery, which fomented and has guided this rebellion, is not 
only oppressive but base ; since bravery — that virtue which all 
men praise — dies out under a system that creates and thrives 
upon brutality and ungoverued passions ? What, therefore, 
if not this meanest and most cruel method of getting rid 
of a dreaded foe, should forever be branded as cowardice? 

Jackson Hospital, as established and conducted by the 
rebels, was excellent: in some respects, few military hos- 
pitals of our own surpass it. It was excellent in its gen- 
eral plan of organization; in its location and its arrangement 
of buildings; in its administration; in its thorough policing; 
in the exceeding cleanliness of its bedding, and in the very 
liberal provision made by the Rebel Government for the 
Hospital Fund. 

Jackson Hospital comfortably accommodates 2,500 pa- 
tients. Winder Hospital, which is near by, but which I did 
not visit, is said to be similar to Jackson Hospital in general 
arrangements and capacity, but inferior in its situation and its 
appointments. The buildings at Jackson Hospital are much 
like our usual wooden hospital barracks, well arranged and 
well warmed and lighted, the floors nicely scoured, and the 
walls, in many wards, covered with canvas, which was 
painted white. The bedsteads w^ere only wood, bat were 
kept very white, and on each was both a straw bed and a 
cotton mattrass, and two feather pillows, with nice pillow 
cases. The sheets and blankets and bed-spreads were unu- 
sually clean, and bore marks of being carefully looked after. 
The cleanliness of the bed-linen was accounted for by the 
large laundry, where sixty (GO) laundresses were constantly 
ut work. The laundry was provided with a long row of 
fixed tubs, into which the water was brought by pipes, 
and ample provision was made for heating water, heating 
irons, (fee, k<^. 



This laundry had its tenements near by for the wo- 
men employed there, where they seemed comfortable in 
their quarters, and neat in personal appearance. At the 
hospital, beside the medical corps and nurses, and the 
two Matrons to every ninety patients, there were in each 
section a Chief Linen-Matron, and a Chief Culinary- 
Matron, with their two assistants. In each section was a 
kitchen for special diet, with four to six stoves — this besides 
the general kitchen attached to each section. The special 
diet list was posted in all the wards, and seemed liberal and 
aiming to secure variety. The Dispensaries were well fitted 
up, and the persons in charge said, in answer to my inquiry, 
that, excepting a deficiency at times in some few articles, their 
supply had been good. The Linen-rooms M'ere kept in the 
neatest order, and seemed to have been unusually well filled. 
The Baggage-rooms were like the rest, clean and well ar- 
ranged. The Dining-rooms of each section, where the con- 
valescents ate, were also kept well, and the tables neat, and 
bearing marks of care and comfort, and convalescents who 
had been there some months assured me that their fare 
was on the whole excellent. There were no covered walks 
connecting the different buildings in the section with 
the dining rooms, nor were there any " tram-ways" from the 
kitchens to the wards ; but the walks were hard and clean, 
and the drains deep and free. At the head of each section 
were neat buildings, one of which was occupied by surgeons, 
others by matrons and women assistants. These buildings, 
with their white-washed fronts and green blinds, and patches 
of grass, had a look of comfort. There was no general 
method of carrying water by pipes over the different build- 
ings, consequently there was no provision for bath rooms in 
the several wards — a decided deficiency; but good water for 
ordinary use was furnished by wells. The water closets for 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



S 013 743 638 3 ^ 

convalescents were located where a running stream carried 
off' the deposits. 

Within the hospital grounds and near by was an open 
grove of large trees, with grass beneath, neatly kept. At 
the further edge of this grove was one of the two large ice 
houses which supplied the hospital, each 30x30 feet, and 18 
feet deep. They are both now filled solid with ice, well 
protected, A little way from the hospital on the other side 
are large sheds and a barn, also a dairy house, with the cold 
water of the melting ice of one of the ice houses flowing 
through it. At this dairy in summer they have had sixty 
cows (pastured near by) to furnish fresh milk, and at times 
fresh butter also, to the patients. The refuse from the barn 
yard goes to enrich the hospital garden of three or four 
acres, which, the surgeon formerly in charge told me, had 
become very productive. 

Near the dairy house stands a large bakery, (at present 
not used) with capacious ovens where formerly, as the man 
in charge stated, they turned out sixty thousand pounds of 
bread per day. 

To the above memoranda is to be added this most import- 
ant fact, viz : that the Eebel Government, in making provi- 
sion for the "Hospital Fund," added one hundred per cent, to 
the usual army ration. Thus was furnished large means for 
purchasing extra supplies. 

Such, roughly sketched, is the record of Jackson Hospital, 
as it had been during the past year or more ; while near by, 
all the time, was Belle Isle, with its shelterless and starving 
thousands. ***** 



LIBf 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



013 743 638 3 ^ 



